When a person becomes drowsy, alertness and responsiveness are reduced. However, people often become drowsy when operating a vehicle for a prolonged period of time. Hence, drowsiness causes many accidents during vehicle operation, such as driving. In particular, after driving for long periods, vehicle drivers often become drowsy and fail to promptly react to adverse situations. This increased response time can cause loss of vehicular control leading to an accident.
Because of the risks of driving or otherwise operating a vehicle while drowsy, conventional safety systems attempt to keep a vehicle driver awake. Many of these conventional methods monitor the frequency in which a vehicle driver's eyelids open and close or measure the eye activity of a vehicle driver to detect signs of drowsiness. Responsive to detecting signs of drowsiness, these conventional safety systems sound an alarm or take another action to alert or startle the vehicle driver.
However, these conventional safety systems only briefly increase vehicle driver alertness. Because these systems only increase driver alertness for a short period of time vehicle drivers frequently become drowsy again if driving or vehicle operation continues. Additionally, vehicle drivers can become desensitized to the alert after it repeatedly occurs, reducing the long-term effectiveness of the alert.
Hence, there is a need for a method and apparatus to reduce vehicle driver drowsiness for more than a short period of time.